Garden Wars, Episode II… The Couch Potato Strikes Back

So yesterday was a gloriously lazy day off for me. I stayed in my jammies until almost 3:00, and spent all morning and afternoon parked on the couch playing a Nancy Drew game. I had finally decided that it was time to do something productive around the house when Matt woke up. He got up, had his coffee, played on his computer a little bit, and then went out to mow the lawn. After he mowed the lawn he went to the shed and got out the weedeater. I decided to “contribute” to the yard work by throwing Lucie’s Flying Squirrel for her a couple of times. I was going to head back in to my piles of laundry and Nancy Drew when he made the comment, “I sure wish you’d do something about the garden.”

My first thought was, well, it was unprintable is what it was; but then I decided to go inside and find my gloves and go back out and work on that horribly overgrown jungle of weeds that I once called a garden. I gathered up my tools and my wheelbarrow and headed out to my poor garden. I started yanking out handfuls of weeds and chucking them into the wheelbarrow. Before long, I was on my knees reaching into clumps of strawberry plants and somewhat carefully removing the weeds that were wrapped around them.

As I did this, my mind began to wander. My thoughts ranged from one end of the scale to the other, and it amazed even me how fast my train of thought could move. I started out thinking, “Why didn’t I do something with my garden at the end of the growing season so that I could have prevented this?” Then I thought, “You know, God made weeds too, and if God doesn’t make mistakes, then really, should I be pulling these? What if this is where God wanted them and that’s why they are so tough to pull out.”

I was fairly amused by this thought, and that somehow brought to mind the AWANA musical I was in when I was 7 years old. It was called, “God’s Project.” Next thing I know, I’m singing songs from a musical I was in 26 years ago, and amazingly enough, I was remembering a lot of the words.

Next my thoughts took a darker turn as the weeds proved more and more resistant to my removal efforts. I started thinking, “These had better be the best ******* strawberries I’ve EVER had for all this effort!!!” And I felt an occasional pang of regret when I’d inadvertently yank out a plant with the beginnings of little berries on it.

As I continued on, my anger at my own laziness last fall and at these intrusive weeds kept me going. Even then as I was wondering once again if these stupid plants were worth it, I came across a whole berry, almost ripe, and a very decent size. Then I was grudgingly inspired to keep going and reclaim my garden.

My thoughts ranged wildly once more from a rather uncharitable notion that I had planted these darned berries for my husband in the first place, so really HE should be the one out there working to reclaim them instead of me. Then I felt bad for thinking that since he had put quite a bit of work into the garden with me. Then I started to wonder about people who say they actually enjoy weeding and I came to the conclusion that they are either masochists, or liars. I’m leaning towards liars.

Finally I was running out of steam and knew I’d have to give up for the night, so I stood up, and about cried because I’d been sitting on my knees pulling weeds for over an hour, and as you’ll recall from my very first blog post, my legs don’t like me very much when I get up from the ground. I decided that I was going to invest in a couple of handheld weeding tools to help me in my battle against these insidious invaders of my garden.

So this morning, I dragged my weary body out of bed, and felt rather like I’d been dragged behind a truck down a bumpy road. When I walked into work this morning, a little slower, and definitely a little stiffer than usual, I went over to the garden tools department and picked out a couple of useful little weapons, er tools to help me tonight. I got what is technically called a “Dandelion Weeder” but in reality should be named after what it’s really good for, a “Slug Killer.” My mother used to get so angry with Kimberly and me because her so-called dandelion weeders were always covered with slug slime and pieces of the slugs that my sister and I had chopped in half with it.

I haven’t ruled out using it as a slug-killer yet, but for now I have decided to use it for its intended purpose of getting rid of weeds. I also decided that I’m going to borrow my mom’s Garden Weasel, and with the help of all my new tools, I’m going to get that garden reclaimed so that I can plant stuff next week.

We’ll see if my resolve to have a garden is stronger than my desire to sit on my butt… Stay tuned.